In some of the most exciting news in CGI gone awry since those heady days when we all still hoped we might someday grasp the fabled “Butthole Cut” of Cats, a version of A Minecraft Movie with its visual effects still in their most rudimentary stages has been circulating online this weekend.
In clips purportedly taken from this unbaked version of the movie, you can see Jack Black’s Steve dancing around in surreal and empty landscapes, surrounded by oddly shaky Minecraft creatures who lack the polish (and weird shininess) that’s been applied to basically everything in the finalized take of Jared Hess’ movie. The effect is, if we dare say this, actually pretty cool looking, and certainly more visually interesting than the one in the film proper, which often feels like it was designed by artists who felt like they were in a desperate arms race with every other distraction crowding into the brains of the attention-challenged middle schoolers the film is targeted at.
As noted by Variety, full leaks of a version of a film never meant to see the light of day are pretty rare in this day and age; the film’s producers haven’t commented yet on the leak. Kotaku, meanwhile, points out that this version of the movie was circulating on piracy sites very shortly after the movie hit theaters, creating the delightful possibility of someone downloading this version without realizing they weren’t getting the finished product, which is a really enjoyable thing to imagine. (“Babe? Does Jack Black look blocky to you?” “Age isn’t kind to anybody, okay?)
None of which, meanwhile, seems like it’s doing a damn thing to blunt A Minecraft Movie‘s impact at the box office, where it’s basically guaranteed to become the most successful film of 2025 to date. The film, which languished in development hell for years, is currently aiming at at least $135 million in its opening weekend, which will instantly make it the second-most successful film of the year, period, and put it in the easy running to outpace Captain America: Brave New World in a couple of weeks. We say Warner Bros. and Legendary should lean into all of this, too: Give the movie a couple of weeks to play out, then bring it back to theaters with the “Jack Black Trapped In A Gray Void Surrounded By Shivering Monsters” version; we’d pony up.
